Apple's 'Red Friday' Lunar New Year Sale to Take Place on January 10 in Asia

macrumors bot

Apple today announced its annual Lunar New Year sale, a one day event for Asian countries that is also known as "Red Friday" because of its similarity to November's Black Friday sales.

​

During the event, which takes place three weeks before the Lunar New Year, Apple will be offering deals on Macs, iPads, iPods, and accessories like the Smart Cover. It is unclear whether Apple will offer traditional price cuts or instead give customers gift cards with purchase as it did in the United States during Black Friday. In previous years, Apple has offered modest cash discounts on products.

Discounted prices will be available in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, on Friday, January 10. Last week, Apple also held its annual "Lucky bag" promotion for Japanese customers.

macrumors newbie

I just bought an iPad mini last Saturday... from the pic it looks like iPad Air, iPad mini, iPod Touch and iPod nano will get discounts... and of course Macs too.

Click to expand...

I don't think the iPad mini with Retina display will get discounts this time. For one thing, last year the old iPad mini (1st gen) didn't while iPad 4th gen did. For another, the outer two circles of "smart covers/cases" in the promo picture are actually of the same size so I can't say they are two models of iPads. The outer two circles seem to be the iPad Air and its Smart Cover/Case.

macrumors 6502a

The color of red is far from just being the colour of communism. Red has been the color of prosperity, love, happiness in all east-Asian countries for millennia. It's just communism came and gave it a bad image.

macrumors 6502

I didn't know these folks had anything comparable to our Black Friday. Though, I'm sure they're much more civilized and patient with it than we are. I've worked some kind of part-time retail gig the past few Black Fridays (Best Buy, American Eagle, among others) and it just amazes me the things people will say and do to other human beings to get a god damn sweater or Smart Cover. A lot of the different Asian cultures celebrate life itself and are just happy to have each other and good health. Material things are simply extras.

macrumors newbie

macrumors 68040

The discounts are actually very small. To put things in context, our iPad air in Singapore starts at $688 for the basic 16gb wifi-only model, and we will likely be seeing discounts of $50 (based on last year), which maybe translates to about US$40 off?

We also saw about $120 off MacBooks, and about 10-15% off related accessories like Apple keyboards, trackpads and routers.

Don't get me wrong - for anyone who happens to be getting an Apple product at that time, any savings is always welcome (assuming it's a flat discount, and not crummy iTunes credit), but even if I bought one earlier, I am not going to be crying about having spent that "extra" few dollars.

macrumors 68030

Ah yes, because black friday isn't associated with any holiday. NOT LIKE THANKSGIVING OR ANYTHING... Oh wait.

Click to expand...

Black Friday denotes the 'start of the christmas season'. This just happens to be the day after Thanksgiving. If Thanksgiving didn't exist, there would have to be some 'start' day. In Asia, since there is no holiday a month before, they have chosen this as the day. Very similar to Black Friday. Are you going to tell me that Black Friday has ONLY to do with Thankgiving, and NOTHING AT ALL to do with Christmas?

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.